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Comment by sirmike_ | Hacker News Reader

Airtable is exactly what https://transpose.com/ Transpose could have been. But better. Been using it for just about everything you can think of. Did not know about the Blocks feature. Awesome. I got fairly good with Transpose until they closed up shop. Fieldbook and Airtable definitely can do things that Trello (cannot do tables) and Evernote (can do tables but very limited) cannot. There is a huge middle ground between Goog Spreadsheets and MSFT Excel. I hope they do not sell out to anyone. The day they do will be the end of their flexibility.

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I hate to burst your bubble- but taking on investments like this probably indicates they’ll be looking for a buy out/sell out eventually

The article literally says that's not the case. They hope to get an IPO. I know doesn't mean it's 100% true but it's still right there.

"Airtable isn't yet profitable, Liu said, but can be "cash flow positive at a moments notice." And an IPO is the eventual goal, he says, because he doesn't want to sell his company again. "

To be fair, lots of founders say this to press, and tell a completely different story to investors. I don't know anything about Howie Liu but in general there's roughly zero correlation between what a founder tells reporters about acquisition plans and reality.

Thanks for pointing that out- I did initially miss that point. Let's see if Liu sticks to that plan.

Most companies could be cashflow positive by firing their employees or selling their technology.

How so? Raising Series B/C usually prices companies out of smaller M&A deals. I would take it as a signal they're in it for the long haul.

Unless airtable becomes its own thing worth a multiple of 50M $... they’ll prob need to sell. It just doesn’t seem like an IPOable business to me.

I dont know, I rely on Excel for everything in my day to day work, and it is so flexible and terrible at the same time, I would gladly pay for a different tool that makes me look 2x smarter. The whole corporate world that insists on doing something 'in Excel' is a ripe market for such an IPOable business

People have been trying that for years.

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